Trump appears to make another attempt to mop up Charlottesville response

President Donald Trump appeared to make another attempt to clean up his response to the violent clashes at a Charlottesville white supremacist rally, using the beginning of his Afghanistan policy speech on Monday evening to denounce prejudice, bigotry and hate.

Trump did not explicitly mention Charlottesville or the protests in which one woman died. But in a tribute to U.S. troops at the outset of his address, he made numerous pointed references to the diversity of the armed forces and said America must set an example as a nation at peace with itself.

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"The young men and women we send to fight our wars abroad deserve to return to a country that is not at war with itself at home. We cannot remain a force for peace in the world if we are not at peace with each other," the president said.

“Love for America requires love for all of its people," Trump also said. "When we open our hearts to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice, no place for bigotry, and no tolerance for hate.”

He added that soldiers understand that a wound inflicted on one member of community is a wound inflicted on all. "When one part of America hurts, we all hurt. And when one citizen suffers an injustice, we all suffer together," Trump said.

The language was a departure from his harsh rhetoric last week, in which Trump doubled down on his claim that “both sides” were to blame for the Charlottesville violence, while praising some members of the neo-Nazi protest as “very fine people.”

The statements set off a fresh furor, after aides previously convinced Trump to issue a pointed statement that “racism is evil” and to call out hate groups by name.

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House Speaker Paul Ryan on Monday night freshly criticized the president’s decision to go off script last Tuesday and attach blame to the counter-protesters.

“I think he could have done better,” Ryan said at a Wisconsin town hall hosted by CNN’s Jake Tapper, later adding, “I do believe he messed up in his comments on Tuesday when it sounded like a moral equivocation… when we needed moral clarity.”

During his prime-time address on Monday, Trump was back on script. He noted that service members are “bound together by common purpose, mutual trust, and selfless devotion to our nation and each other.”

"Let us make a simple promise to the men and women we ask to fight in our name that, when they return home from battle, they will find a country that has renewed the sacred bonds of love and loyalty that unite us together as one," the president said.